Scarification

He's dressed just like his father:
A Yankees fitted cocked
slightly to the side. A hoodie
two sizes too big unzipped.
Sneakers that probably cost
twice the price of my vans
even though they could fit inside.
His big eyes of ripe citrus
look up out of a stroller
at me and wonder with
fear and awe who in God's image I am.
His jaw is on a hinge and suddenly
the Nintendo DS has become obsolete.
To stare back at him from above my book
could mean a multitude of things:
Tears
A smile
A bashful turn or
Irreverent words hurled like
a squeaky bike tire
and fingers pointed.

To this day I can remember
some of these moments from
my own irreverence.
I wonder if my counterparts in these
childhood observances can still
remember, as vividly as I can,
the time when my mother first told me
how to say "No, thank you"
instead of just "No"
Or how mortified I was when I hugged
my mom's friend's leg instead of hers
because my face was three feet below
or that when they hit their own child
with an open palm that I
felt that slap on my face and
it was me who cried though.

I wonder if the other little kids
I knew when I was little
still remember the day in pre-school
when I brought my father's knife
to show off or
if they remember when my teeth sunk
into Collin's back because
I had tripped and fallen
or his blood stained shirt
or my blood stained mouth.
Or if my third grade classmates remember me
being on crutches for three months
because of a tumor in my leg
and the resulting surgery.
How I had to hop up stairs on one foot
How ashamed I was if I fell.
I wonder if it struck them as hard
as it struck me.

I wonder if I ever flipped this on
it's head and scared the shit
out of some grown-up when i was small.
Drove them to tears, made them
turn away embarrassed.
But probably not because
I was different then.
I didn't have this scar on my lip
from when I fell on dad's toolbox
or the one on my arm from when
my brother hit me with a paint roller
and had to watch five stitches be
woven into my arm
in a sterile hospital room
on Christmas day.
I wonder what he thought to watch his
fourth grade brother be held down by his
father; he was in sixth grade.
Talk about scars.

I probably didn't scare anybody because
I didn't have this want-to-be
beard of peach fuzz on my face
I didn't have the anxiety I do now
I didn't have the consciousness or the
cunning or the twisted mind I do now.
I didn't have the friends I do now
or the fantasies or the lies or desires I do now.
These have molded and added to
and chipped away at me like
some kind of fleshy Jackson Pollack now.
I'm a boogie man now,
a specter, a goblin now
haunted by his actions and
haunting the lives of those he sees now.

I held open a door today for an old couple
even though I was in a rush
but I'm sure they don't know
that it was a demon who held it for them.
But I wonder if they did
because they've been there
and that's why their eyes
looked like raisins instead of grapes.

88th street, between Columbus and Central Park West

On 88th street, the ginko trees
glow green, illuminating,
they seem somehow to be lightbulbs
that cast impossible, midday shadows
against every stoic brownstone;
a bulldog sniffs my feet
and the man on his leash says,
come on, come on,
and in a second the thing
comes back from behind me
so excited I want to haul up
a big bundle of sticks on the curb
at our feet, we're both eyeing them,
and throw them into the air
like batons, want the whole block
to run from their houses shrieking,
mouths open wide, clamoring over each other
to collect the splendor of spring,
to clean their teeth on its branches,
to run circles around each other yipping,
to roll in the streets, bounding naked
and muddy! A happy golden retriever
trots by, then, a big braided
treat in its mouth, hurrying to the park,
and stops at the corner--a New York City
dog with a concept of traffic--and his owner
comes up laughing, an old lady
wearing appliqués, wow! what a smart dog,
I say, the ginko trees glittering back
from her eyes, she's a rescue! she says,
an explanation that makes much sense
to me, what with all the spring salvation,
and I'm still standing here by the sticks
alone and again I have the urge
to fling the twigs, sticks bouncing and bumping
the cars, want their owners to come out
of their beautiful, expensive homes
and race me towards the branches,
stuff them in their yapping mouths, hungry,
all of us running towards the park,
not bothering to stop at corners.